filmbriefs
Cinematographer

Anatoli Golovnya

2
briefs
13:00
average
26 min
in total
On film.briefs2
13:00

Storm over Asia

Vsevolod Pudovkin · 1928

Storm over Asia (1928), directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin, is the final film of his revolutionary trilogy. Set in a fictionalised Mongolia under British occupation, it follows a Mongol trapper elevated to puppet ruler — then turned against his masters. Made by Mezhrabpom-Film with cinematography by Anatoli Golovnya, it uses real Cham dance footage and a tightly controlled visual style to argue that legitimacy is performative, and resistance begins when the performance is reclaimed.

13:00

The End of St. Petersburg

Vsevolod Pudovkin, Mikhail Doller · 1927

The End of St. Petersburg (1927), directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin and Mikhail Doller, traces a peasant boy’s journey from rural innocence to revolutionary clarity across four years of upheaval in pre-Soviet Russia. Shot in stark, rhythmic montage by Anatoli Golovnya and edited by Oleksandr Dovzhenko, it avoids individual psychology in favour of systemic analysis — linking factory exploitation, imperial war, and bread riots to the fall of Tsarism and rise of the Bolsheviks. Commissioned for the October Revolution’s tenth anniversary, it is a didactic, formally rigorous work of political cinema.